It is August 2005. We are in Sorrento, Italy, at L’Antica Trattatoria, a small restaurant, off the beaten path. In the soft glow of candlelight, our half-empty wine glasses rest on a crisp white linen tablecloth. A serenading violinist plays in the background, “Come Back to Sorrento.” We laugh that the scene is, except for us, like something out of a movie. Me, nearly 70, and Mike 65, we don’t exactly fit a movie image of romantic leads. Still, on this, our 38th wedding anniversary, we are romantic.
“Here’s to us,” Mike toasts with the Campania recommended by our waiter. “I’m so glad we found each other. I can’t imagine life without you.”
As we tap glasses, I quote the inscription I’d so long ago had engraved inside the ring that was to be Mike’s. “With love deepening, enduring,”
Over a long, slow dinner, we talk of shared good times and bad.
I mention our honeymoon. Two days alone in the mountains, then a trip to Florida to meet Mike’s family. My two daughters, Sharon, 9, and Cindi, 7, went with us.
“Remember how my mother insisted we take their bedroom—the one without a door?” Mike says.
We laugh, remembering that the only room in that whole house with a door on it had been the bathroom, making the bathroom our honeymoon suite.
“I think I may still have a bruise on my back from the bathtub faucet,” I say.
After the tagliolini for me—with lemon cream sauce, red prawns, and lumpfish on creamed spinach, and equally lofty lamb chops for Mike, after sipping Limoncelo and hearing yet one more plaintive rendition of “Come Back to Sorrento,” we walk the few blocks back to our hotel. It’s a balmy night, lit by a bright half moon, seasoned by a sweet bay breeze.
Getting ready for bed, Mike sidles up to me, kisses me lightly on the back of my neck and asks, “Wanna do it in the bathtub? Just for old time’s sake?”
“Let’s forgo the challenge of intrusive plumbing fixtures and make use of our comfy rented bed,” I say. And we do.
A few days later we take the train to Rome, where we meet up with the Dodsons—my brother, Dale, sister-in-law, Marg, and their grown daughter, Corry. The next day we meet my cousin’s wife, Janice, and her 11-year-old granddaughter, Taylor. I no longer remember the details and surprises of our Rome meeting. I wish I could. What I’m left with is the sense of miscommunications, chance meetings, and light-hearted laughter. Well … I do remember the Colosseum and the Vatican. The Spanish Steps and Santa Maria Trastevere, a church dating from the third century. Mostly though, I remember fond, shared laughter, coupled with a sense of wonder that we were actually in Italy, that we had all found each other in Rome.
After a few days in Rome, and with a few wrong turns, Mike and I in one rented car, the Dodsons in another, Janice and Taylor on a combination of trains and buses, we all manage to find our way to Montepulciano, where our daughter, Sharon, son-in-law Doug, and their two children, Lena, 5, and Subei, 11, are already ensconced in the picturesque villa Sharon had ferreted out online. When we arrive in the late afternoon, they are outside, sitting at a big round wooden table, shaded by two large trees the owner later identifies as “Umbrella Pines.” Quick hugs all around. Quick chatter of travel adventures. Luggage taken to individual accommodations. Quick uses of the facilities, and then we are all at the big table, in the yard that overlooks a rolling hill of grapevines. Doug opens wine, Sharon puts cheeses and bread rounds on the table, and we catch up with one another’s travel adventures.
We fall into a loose, unspoken practice of side trips from Montepulciano every morning. In small, ever-changing groups, we stroll through out-of-the-way villages. We visit Florence, so overwhelmed by the art that we make peace with the knowledge that we won’t see it all, that it’s better to experience a few pieces deeply than to impart on a self-imposed survey course. Mike and I join the group that, sensibly, hires a driver for the narrow, curvy, cliffhanging drive overlooking the Amalfi Coast. But wherever our day trips take us, we gather in the late afternoon, around the big wooden table, with whatever day’s accumulation of wines and cheeses we’ve found along the way. Laughing at mishaps, showing our wares, and always the ongoing back and forth with what has become this precious sabbatical from worries for our troubled world, the weighing and measuring of where and when to go for dinner.
On the last night in Montepulciano, with only Dale and Marg and Mike and me left at the villa, in honor of our just-passed anniversary, Dale and Marg take us to dinner at a local restaurant. Mike and I married almost exactly one year after Dale and Marg tied the proverbial knot. We married in the same church, with many of the same guests, and always, either in person or from a distance, we mark each other’s anniversaries.
I don’t remember the name of the restaurant, or what it looked like inside, though I think there were candles. I don’t remember what we ate, though I think we agreed it was one of the best meals ever. Beyond any of those details, though, here’s what I do remember: We are sitting at an outside table, on a high balcony, with a panoramic view of the night sky that is unhampered by tall buildings or rooftops. The bright, full moon is huge, breathtaking, shining on our little table, shining on us, as if we alone have been singled out for its radiance. Now, years later, as I sit writing of that night, I sense again the gravitational pull of that brilliant, Italian moon.
Back home in Sacramento, timed to coincide with the next full moon, Mike and I treat the Dodsons to a different sort of anniversary dinner. Jeannie and Bill Ward join us for the celebration on the Fair Oaks footbridge that spans the lower banks of the American River. We set up a card table and six of those folding canvas chairs, like the ones you see lining the fields of youth soccer games. Eschewing paper and plastic products, Mike covers the well-worn card table with a white tablecloth and a small bouquet of yellow roses. By the time the others join us on the bridge, the table is set with “real” plates and wine glasses. A pre-cooled bottle of Chardonnay nestles in one of those cylindrical marble wine chillers, and a red is opened and breathing.
Our food offerings—salads, both green and potato, fried chicken, chocolate chip cookies for desert—are not of a Montepulciano style. Nevertheless, it is a tasty meal, worthy of the Dodsons’ 39th anniversary festivity. In between stories and remembrances of the history of their years together, others who’ve come out on the bridge to enjoy the full moon, or who are simply walking from one side of the river to the other, pause to remark on our dinner set-up and to ask about the occasion. Mostly younger, the friendly passersby express awe and wonder when they learn that the featured couple are marking 39 years. That is, in turn, a source of amusement to us.
With the darkening sky and the rising full moon, we sing moon songs. Mike and Marg are clear and loud enough that Dale, the Wards, and I, can sing out without danger of hurting any passing listener’s ears: “Blue Moon,” “Shine on Harvest Moon,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” “Moon Over Miami,” and, finally, “Moon Up In the Sky,” a song written and composed by Mike’s Aunt Treval, who for decades dreamt of success in the music business while working as a telephone operator in Marble Hill, Missouri.
August 2005 was packed with good times. Then came September and hints of trouble ahead. As hints came more frequently, as hints became certainties, no matter how many times I listened to “Come Back to Sorrento,” with Mario Lanza’s resonant tenor voice, backed by a full orchestra replete with weeping strings, I knew beyond a doubt we could never return to Sorrento.
January 2010
Dear Mike,
I know this letter, and all of the letters I’ve written to you since 2009, are only pretend, that you will never read them, that even if someone were to try to read them to you, you couldn’t listen. But it is strangely comforting to be telling parts of this story directly to you, rather than simply telling it about you.
The worst part of this most difficult time of my life is that I’m not able to talk through any of it with you. Not the loss of our home, not the endless work of taking care of you, not the bankruptcy process, not having to live with almost no discretionary income. All of that is difficult, and not what I expected to be dealing with in my 70s. But not being able to talk with you, to share my deepest thoughts and feelings with you—that is the very worst. For most of our 40-plus years of marriage we were each other’s closest confidantes. Late at night, over dinner, in front of the fireplace, in bed in the mornings, we talked, laughed, worried, reassured. There were times we argued angrily over who knows what. But nearly always, our home was a loving home, our bed was a loving bed, and we laughed. I miss that all so much. I miss your arms around me. I miss the warmth of love in your eyes. I miss your frequent, spontaneous compliments—“You’re a pretty woman, Marilyn,” or “Your lips look delicious!” I don’t think such compliments will come my way again.
I am ever grateful to be surrounded by friends and family who care for us both, who travel alongside me on this sad, uncharted odyssey, who offer help at every turn. Still, I hunger for your loving support and insights, for the depth of conversation that was once ours together.
Loving you to the end,
Marilyn